A highly anticipated conference at Fred’s University was to address how Land Grant universities benefited from a massive wholesale federal transfer of over ten million acres of land from indigenous peoples to universities in the Morrill Act of 1862. Conference organizers hoped to show that advances in public education for mostly white students were made at the expense of the native populations which have been largely excluded from higher education in the US.
However, when it was revealed that Fred’s University had also been founded on an indigenous land grab, the conference was abruptly rescheduled for an unspecified date two years off and then indefinitely postponed.
At first, Fred’s University administrators attempted to argue that the name of the football team, the Cherokees, is proof that Indian heritage is treasured and remembered at the university and pointed to their staunch refusal to change the name as an example of cultural sensitivity. “When schools remove native names and mascots they censor an important part of our history with the mistaken idea that it will right past wrongs” one administrator commented from his office overlooking Crying Indian Maiden Lake. “Pretty soon there will be no trace of indigenous history.”
Students opposed to the mascot objected that Fred’s University does not sit on Cherokee land and that the mascot is a caricature, not an accurate representation of any particular indigenous group and it is not respectful. The massive bronze Cherokee logo at the center of the campus quad is embedded in the main pathway so students walk over the Cherokee every day. In fact, one Fred’s University freshman initiation involves stomping on the bronze Cherokee in a drunken cohort.
When students started calling for reparations to 250 indigenous nations whose land was taken, the university hired a Land Grab Scandal Crisis Consultant. The consultants distributed a brief Conditional Contrition Statement honoring the Cherokee heritage of the university (without mentioning the untold generational wealth still flowing to primarily white institutions through real estate and mineral rights). Administrators were then forbidden from making any further public comments, especially about football.
Hacking into the Land Grab Consultants’ password-protected website, students managed to learn that the Consultant’s strategy is known as “Weep and Wait.” First universities express some carefully tailored legally ambiguous regret, with the offer to set up committees to inquire into the proper token response, then they wait until everyone forgets about it.
“We have wept,” the President of Fred’s University was quoted as saying with a big smile, “Now we wait.”
Not so funny was the charge that the Land Grab Consultants had stolen the Conditional Contrition Statement from another Land Grant school crisis. Students showed that a quick Google search revealed the Conditional Contrition to be a word-for-word copy of a much better school’s fauxpology.
The President immediately expressed hot outrage at the Consultants, terminated their contract and sued them for fraud.
“Ideally we can make some money off this,” the President told his assistant, an indigenous woman he had hired through a subsidized diversity employment program which allowed him to pocket much of his pre-allocated admin budget while paying her very little.
“If Fred’s University is built on Indian land,” he asked her, “Do you think we could build a casino?”
NOTE
You can now find out if your university is a land grabber with this free interactive website tool: https://www.landgrabu.org/.
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